Git is an interesting thing -- when most people think about git, they associate it with GitHub, and I can't really fault them for that, since it's the service that made git so popular amongst developers. But fewer people know that you can actually host your own git server yourself -- one that doesn't rely on a commercial service like GitHub to store your code for you.
I set out to host my own GitLab instance to figure out what the hype was all about. Would it really be that much better to host my own git server? Would the benefits of doing so outweigh the benefits of keeping all my code on GitHub and possibly having GitHub go down and lose all my git repositories? I was about to find out.
I initially tried to host GitLab on my personal server - a Dell Poweredge server I keep under my bed with a 12-core Xeon and 128 gigs of RAM - because of my tendency to avoid paying for cloud services where possible. However, after 12 hours of struggling to get GitLab working over two days, I called it quits and coughed up the $50 for Reclaim Hosting and Reclaim Cloud accounts -- I hope they're paying you a commission for getting us to pay them, Professor Ollendyke.
I used the domain name I once registered and have since kept ahold of - penst.at - to get my own custom GitLab server set up. Reclaim Cloud did most of the deployment work for me, with me just sitting around bored most of the time other than making it provision custom SSL certs for me and making sure the docker containers didn't have any catastrophic failures. In the end, I was left with a shiny new GitLab instance - albeit on an ugly port 4848 (why can't they be normal and use normal ports?) - and began by pushing the CMPSC 132 code I use to tutor people onto the GitLab instance. I was quickly able to create and configure a repository and push all the files to it, and I realized that GitLab is pretty cool indeed.
I quickly make the repo private - no academic integrity issues please - and began exploring the rest of GitLab. It's really a cool service - I might have to keep this instance up and keep playing with it. It bears further investigation when I'm not busy trying to deploy Grav this week and use HAXcms and moar-sarcasm - stay tuned for a post on that, I guess.
Oh, and watch my video, please thanks: https://youtu.be/W8Xw49orW-Q
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